Dust of these domains: walking workshop with Bianca Hester

Dust of these domains (2023-ongoing) is a participatory walking and making workshop led by artist Bianca Hester. Developed from Hester’s reading-walking work, the workshop will explore the environmental and social forces embedded within the grounds of The University of Queensland St Lucia, on Yuggera and Turrbal Country.

Through a combination of walking, listening, conversation and tactile engagement, participants will be invited to consider the deep time of geological, environmental and social change. The workshop will be centered on textual fragments newly iterated from Hester’s ongoing work Dust of these domains which will be activated as lively footnotes accompanying a collective movement through the campus.

The workshop will be speculative and involve moments of hands-on making, with no prior artistic experience required. It is intended for artists, arts workers, students, researchers and anyone interested in walking, material practices, environmental thinking and embodied forms of engagement.

This free, in-person workshop will take place at UQ St Lucia. Numbers are limited. Participation is via EOI (closing Sunday 25th of October). Participants should be prepared to walk outdoors for all of the session and to engage with objects and materials through touch. Please indicate access needs in the EOI. Further workshop details will be shared with confirmed participants.

• Thursday 12 November, 2:30pm-4:30pm |  UQ St Lucia
• Participation by EOI (closing Sunday 25th of October)

This iteration of Dust of these domains is part of Reflective Motives: Two Days with UQ Art Museum and the Climate Aware Creative Practices Network.

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Dust of these domains (2023-ongoing) is a work based on walking that develops in relation to the specific locations in which it is performed. It combines an evolving script and a set of hand-scaled objects bearing impressions of fossilised plant life from the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, when the continent formed part of Gondwana approximately 250 million years ago. 

Initially developed from the book Sandstone written by Hester in 2020 for the ‘Lost Rocks’ series, textual fragments are activated as a set of lively footnotes that mobilise a collective body of participants. The text speaks to the materialities, environmental contexts and geologic temporalities of the places in which it occurs.

This new iteration tracks a circuit through the grounds of the University of Queensland on Yuggera and Turrbal Country, and involves listening, moving, and tactile engagement. In this work participants are invited to reflect upon the deep time of social and environmental forces entangled within the current climate crisis.

Past iterations of Dust of these domains have occurred in the following locations:

Bundanon, on Dharawal and Dhurga Country (2023); Paddington, on Gadigal and Bidgigal Country (2024); Wollongong, on Wodi Wodi Country (2025); Goulburn, on Gundungurra Country (2025).

See: www.biancahester.com

Bianca Hester’s practice explores entanglements of materiality, place and the forces of ecological change across timescales, producing expansive artworks that cultivate new modes of attentive, relational embodiment amid the pressures of climate crisis.

Employing situational methodologies – she combines experimental fieldwork, engaging the geologic record, site-writing, sculptural production, collaboration and performed actions – to develop projects that unpack the material conditions of specific places. This results in an expansive form of public art unfolding in dialogue with a range of interlocutors and participants. 

She has exhibited widely within Australia and internationally. Recent works include: Circuits of Solar Descent, Wollongong Sculpture in the Gardens (2025), Metabolic Scales, ‘These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature’ at UQ Art Museum (2025), Lithic Bodies, UNSW Galleries and The Clifton School of Arts (2024), Deep time coastline public walking series, throughout the Illawarra (2024), Dust of these domains, ‘Siteworks’, Bundanon (2023) and Reading Walking Lithic Bodies, Museum of Contemporary Art (2022). Her written works include Sandstone, Lost Rocks, A Published Event (2020) and Groundwork, Perimeter Editions #69 (2021). She is a continuing member of the collaborative trio Open Spatial Workshop (2003-ongoing see www.osw.com.au), and a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow (2016). She is a co‑founding member of The Ecology Exchange - a collective of First and Second Nations artists and ecologists working in the Illawarra region. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design, UNSW Sydney. 

Image credit: Bianca Hester, detail of Dust of these domains, Gadigal/Bidjigal Land Paddington NSW, performance presented in association with the exhibition Lithic Bodies, 2024. Photo: Anna Hay.